Epic Games goes full vibe code: MAXIMUM AI ACCELERATION
Your friend and mine, Tim Sweeney of Epic Games, is going even harder into the AI slop. He tweeted: [Twitter, archive] We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration. MAXIMUM AI ACCELERATION!! Epic was working on a first-person shooter…
Annons
Annons
Your friend and mine, Tim Sweeney of Epic Games, is going even harder into the AI slop. He tweeted: [Twitter, archive] We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration. MAXIMUM AI ACCELERATION!! Epic was working on a first-person shooter game using Disney characters. This was slated for March. It’s now been delayed indefinitely — and the developers have been directed to finish the project with AI: [Bloomberg, archive] Developers on the game, a shooter featuring characters from the Marvel and Star Wars franchises, were instructed to implement an “AI first” production model using tools such as Anthropic’s Claude. Humans will then manage and guide that work. “No more hand-written code,” one of the game’s directors told staff in an internal message reviewed by Bloomberg. The director added that all art for the game would be “generated with full AI workflows.” … “We’re embracing AI-accelerated development, led by Epic developers who are the visionaries and creative drivers for everything we do,” said Jake Jones, communications director at Epic Games, in a statement to Bloomberg News. A spokesperson for Disney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. How good will this new shooter be? We have a taste of Epic’s vibe genius with their new game launcher: [blog post] Programming is hard. So, instead of doing that, we vibe coded a new Epic Games Launcher that’s way faster and more responsive than the current one, and has a new look. Epic even added an infographic of how fast the vibe launcher is. Faster than Steam! (The same day, Valve released a Steam update that was even faster. Oh well.) [Twitter, video] Martin Keely from Epic told the Verge: [Verge] The launcher is something that is demonstrative of the speed and efficiency both from the development process and the actual output that we think gives us confidence that the direction that we’re headed in is a positive one for our company and for gaming development overall. Epic is putting the new launcher forward as “demonstrative.” In testing, the launcher leaves trails of glitches, artifacts, and transparency errors. The errors look very like a bad video driver setup — but there are multiple videos of this thing failing just this way for different people. [Mastodon; Reddit, video] Epic considered this release quality. If you ever feel like a bad programmer, this will lift your mood. Epic is also trying to bring its Easy Anti-Cheat root kit to Linux, so it can sell you Fortnite. They already have a userspace version, but this is a kernel version. This will involve: [blog post] signed kernel, signed kernel modules, and secure boot with attestation. That is, it’s a vibe-coded root kit. They also want to get Linux distributions to agree this is a good idea. Good luck with that. This new phase in Epic’s existence will be incredible! As in, not credible. Video — Podcast